Rebuilding the Unions Will Save the Middle Class
Rebuilding unions in America is a complex task, but there are plenty of reasons to reform and revive them. Research shows that unions increase pay for the lowest-paid workers, moderating income inequality and shoring up the middle class… the backbone of any healthy democracy.
For decades, unions were the muscle behind the American Dream. After World War II, at the peak of union strength, roughly one in three American workers carried a union card. These weren’t just factory jobs, they were ladders to the middle class. Auto workers in Detroit, steelworkers in Pittsburgh, miners in Appalachia; whole towns were built on union wages that bought houses, cars, vacations, braces for the kids and a pension for retirement.
Unions didn’t just boost wages for their own members, they lifted the floor for entire industries. Even non-union companies had to offer better pay and benefits to compete. It was a check on runaway corporate greed, a counterweight to the concentrated power of big business.
But starting in the 1970s, the tide turned. Globalization and automation gutted American manufacturing. Anti-union laws and aggressive union-busting campaigns flourished under politicians who promised “freedom” but delivered record profits to corporations and stagnant paychecks to workers. Landmark strikes lost. Factories closed. Entire communities withered. By 2024, union membership had dropped below 11% of the workforce… the lowest it’s been since before the Great Depression.
Yet the idea at the heart of unions never died: when workers stand together, they can’t be ignored. In the early 20th century, it was unions that won the eight-hour workday, the weekend, child labor bans, workplace safety rules and the idea that workers are more than disposable cogs. They fought… and sometimes bled for those rights. Many of the workplace protections we take for granted today were forged on picket lines.
Of course, unions haven’t always gotten it right. Some were exclusive, shutting out Black workers, immigrants and women. Some became bloated or corrupt. But history shows that the solution is to fix and expand unions, not abandon them. A revitalized labor movement can include all workers; the barista, the gig driver, the warehouse picker, the nursing home aide.
Rebuilding unions for the 21st century means organizing the unorganized, modernizing outdated labor laws and holding employers accountable when they break them… because they do, and they do it often. It means protecting workers from retaliation, closing loopholes that let companies call full-time workers “contractors,” and making sure that the right to organize isn’t a dusty idea but a living one.
A union card won’t fix everything, but it’s a tool. It’s leverage. It’s democracy on the shop floor. And when workers have that, they have a real shot at a better life and we all have a real shot at a fairer, stronger country.
We’ve been here before. We can get there again.
